Monday, April 11, 2016

Find patients with missing email addresses

In our age of technology, more and more people are tethered
to their mobile phones, tablets and laptops 24/7. I am not only a practice
management coach and trainer, but I am also a dental patient. Like an estimated
88% of smartphone owners*, if you want to contact me and confirm my appointment,
the preferred method of contact is email or text message. Many times, the
practice is calling patients to confirm their appointments from a back office
phone line and the patient might not recognize the phone number … so the call
goes to voicemail. In our busy lives, we might not check our voicemail until that
evening or a couple days later. By then, it is more than likely after office
hours or too late to call back.

If you are using a third-party software for email and/or
text messaging, you need to make sure that you are reaching out to as many
patients as possible. If you have been spotty on asking for email addresses,
you can search your Dentrix software and find patients who have a missing email
address. This will help you grow your email list and connect with patients in a
more efficient and effective way. You will save time and your patients will
appreciate it.

·The first way you can search for patients
without an email address is with the Dentrix letter merge feature and generate
a list of patients. Go to the Office Manager > Letters & Custom Lists
> highlight the Patient Report by Filters > Edit. In the lower left
corner, there is a dropdown menu for email. Select only without (see the image
below). Check mark patients, but I would not filter it with any other options
because then you might skip some people. Click Close and click on the button for
Open in List Manager. This will give you a list of patient names who do not
have email addresses.

·The second way you can search for patients
without an email address is on a daily basis using the Daily Huddle Report. Go
to the Office Manager > Analysis > Daily Huddle Report > (see image
below). Click on the Selected Patient List > check mark the patients with no
email. This will generate a page on the Daily Huddle that will give you a list
of patients coming in today. If there is an “x” next to the no email column,
then you can ask those patients for their email address.

Communicating with patients using today’s technology and in
a way that is more convenient for your patients will increase your
confirmations and help increase your patient retention. Do you want to learn
more about Patient Retention? CLICK HERE

Dayna loves her work. She has over 25 years of experience in the dental industry, and she’s passionate about building efficient, consistent, and secure practice management systems. Dayna knows that your entire day revolves around your practice management software—the better you learn to use it, the more productive and stress-free your office will be. In 2016, Dayna founded Novonee ™, The Premier Dentrix Community, to help cultivate Dentrix super-users all over the country. Learn more from Dayna at www.novonee.com and contact Dayna at dayna@novonee.com.